Final Fantasy XIV Part 3

So.

The game has got its hooks in me deep. I have played nothing else in weeks and am still loving the game. A lot has changed since my last post, as well - chief among them being I now consider myself a White Mage first and foremost. It is even my highest leveled class, at level 44, and will likely be the class I complete the main story with.

I still like Archer/Bard, mind you, and that will likely be the second class I get to 50, but I will be going for endgame gear for my WHM first. I cannot stop gushing about how much I like to play WHM to people, and I'm sure my Free Company (basically FFXIV's version of guilds - collection of players that play together and have a private chatbox, basically) is sick of hearing me talk about it.

I've never felt the way I do while playing a videogame like I do when playing a WHM. When running a dungeon, I have a lot of responsibility - and since I'm playing with other players, I feel the social pressure of trying to keep everyone alive rather than thinking "eh, if the CPU dies, I'll just try again, who cares." I have to keep the tank healed, but if a DPS wanders into damage I have to heal them, too. And if the tank sucks? My job gets even harder. If the tank cannot keep aggro, I will be healing everyone a lot, running out of MP, then frantically casting Cure on whoever needs the heal the most when I have the MP - which gets pretty tense because when a battle goes belly up, people tend to forget their jobs, and DPS players start taking damage they shouldn't. All while dodging area of effect attacks!

Most of my dungeon runs have been good. I get a lot of player commendations, which I like (only 465 more until a golden Magitek Armor!), and feel pretty good getting through a dungeon without any deaths. When things go sour, though, I feel pretty bad. My first (and as of this post, only) run of Cutter's Cry was a nightmare. The tank died to a random mob early on, and though he said it was his fault, I don't think it was. I was running from an AoE attack, and since he had only a sliver of damage, I thought it was safe to do so. Once I got out of range and queued up a Cure, he was dead! Then it was up to the DPSs and I to finish off the enemies. Embarrassing! A DPS also died on the final boss, though he said it was because he was using a Limit Break and couldn't escape the AoE. I just assume they were being nice - I got zero player commendations for that run. I suppose it doesn't help that I had to be told I had Cleric Stance on when the dungeon started (this switches your INT and MIND stats, which allows you to do more damage which is great for soloing, but since it lowers your healing capability, is terrible for dungeons)!

I really need to level some other classes though, because I am using precisely zero skills/abilities from classes besides WHM. I suppose I should level Thaumaturge, but I'm spoiled by quick wait times in the Duty Finder, so I don't want to go back to DPS! I began leveling Gladiator yesterday, to speed Duty Finder times up even more when I get around to doing dungeons as a Tank, I suppose.

This game, though. I can't remember the last time, if ever, I've been addicted to a game so much. I think about it constantly. Work is just about to start as I type this post, and I cannot wait for stupid work to be over so I can go home and play it.